Sport in watching those who deceive

Anson Cameron

''All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.''H. L. Mencken

I HAVE a gobsmacked admiration for barefaced public liars. Great acts of deception, like great acts of courage or compassion or great works of art, are beyond all but a few. Watching someone work at the limit of human capability is always spellbinding. Tendulkar cover driving, Streep arching an eyebrow, Pavarotti holding a note … just to see a thing done rarely well. A thing you couldn't do yourself.

So watching men like Craig Thomson, Lance Armstrong and Conrad Black front cameras, parliaments and inquiries and deny malfeasance with a moral timbre surpassing Lord Olivier's Henry V is, while initially enraging, eventually awe-inspiring. Partly it's the exotic nature of untruth, a trick like a Hendrix guitar lick, beyond full knowing. We shake our heads at it as we do watching someone pull a rabbit from a hat.

Conrad Black. Photo: AFP

And the irony that attends public denials gives a black humour to the event for those of us who enjoy seeing blinkered go-getters brought low. The barefaced lie is such a desperate cry for dignity - and is so damned undignified. To watch Craig Thomson reproach all of us in the Federal Parliament was to see a man, through sheer willpower, come so close to believing his own story he was overcome by its telling. If, like me, you didn't believe that story, then the whole hour was one of the most darkly absurd in our Federal Parliament's history.

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You'd be tempted to think when a public figure stands to make his denial he suddenly forgets, through a vast act of mind-control, the raven-haired woman in her G-string who got him into this mess. But, no. She's there. Only she's now morphed from a $500-an-hour friend into a bunny-boiler who must be rebuffed for the good of his wife, who will be saved humiliation, and his kids, who won't be heckled riding to school.

His duty is to deny her. Nothing to do with his own guilt or innocence, he tells himself. A noble act to defend wife and child from you and me. The frequency with which publicly accused men cite the injury you and I are inflicting on their families makes us sound like a collective of rapists and drunk drivers.

It would be easy to fess up and let the redemption begin. He wishes he could do it. But for the sake of the family he must stare down his accusers. Oh, and denial allows his wife to believe in him, too, and allows a fragile innocence to play on the home front, and life can go on, a little frosty at times, but otherwise normal.

In a recent interview with the BBC's Jeremy Paxman, convicted felon and fallen media baron Conrad Black said, ''No, I'm not a criminal'', before claiming the US justice system is ''a fraudulent, fascistic conveyor belt of the corrupt prison system'' and that he was the victim of a ''smear job from A to Z''. Then he said of Paxman: ''You're just a gullible fool. You're a priggish, gullible British fool who takes seriously this ghastly American justice system that any sane English person knows is an outrage.'' Not since Jeffrey Archer has a lord so eloquently denounced justice. Presumably Black would be happy to throw open the gates of every American prison and let the convicted usher forth as a gesture to his own innocence. His persecution is just another article of outrageous fortune he has risen above, and his rising above it further proof of his virtue.

And, indeed, if you deny guilt long enough you might find the miraculous salvation you're hanging out for. Who believed O. J. Simpson could get a not guilty verdict, having watched him cruise the freeways in his white RV looking for a bridge to jump off while a convoy of cops bullhorned sweet-talk at him? Johnnie Cochran.

Behind every famously accused person sits a lawyer as ambitious as an acorn. Why does an aspiring attorney lick his lips when a fiend eyeball-deep in evidence steps into his chambers? Because the more foreboding a client's predicament, the greater the lawyer's triumph will be if he achieves a not guilty verdict.

As in sport or war, in the courtroom you're measured by the adversary you defeat. Your heroism is in direct proportion to the size of the demon you slay. If Shane Warne bowls out a park cricketer on a sticky wicket, he gains nothing. If he bowls Kevin Pietersen around his legs on the fifth morning of a Test as England is charging at victory, he joins the gods. That's why lawyers want an O. J. Simpson. Getting an innocent client off is like bowling a park cricketer. But a silk who extricates an obviously doomed dude from his septic future will live on as an artist of jurisprudence.

Professional crims use denial as a methodology; it's a valuable tool of the trade. On some jobs it works. On others, not so well. But pro crims always have a get-out point. When denial becomes more expensive than confession, they put up their hand. No morals involved; no loss of face.

It's simple math measured in months and years. A judge, like a priest, pays for remorse with leniency. So, yeah, mea culpa, your honour, and what's the discount? Good crooks work to this simple contract. They don't let pride get in the way. Amateurs like Jeffrey Archer, Thomson, Black and Armstrong do. They could take a lesson from a career safecracker. Denial can become exorbitant.

But, then, a safecracker has no public self to protect. A public man like a politician or a media lord or a famous sportsman has a public self. An endlessly vain beast made of its own media profile, a parasite that some time ago surreptitiously attached itself to him and has since become as essential a companion as a conjoined twin, sharing the organs of ego and pride. He can't let his public self die. That death brings his own. But as long as he denies any wrongdoing, a chimera of innocence can be maintained and his public self can be kept alive. So, cut the public liar some slack. Thrill at his vein-popping indignation and rejoice in the baroque detail of his ad hoc denials. He is lying to save the life of someone he loves.